Miss M. Thompson has now placed at our disposal a far greater body of evidence for studying the Athenian New Style coinage than was previously available. This is a service which cannot be underestimated. Nevertheless it is my belief that her evidence can be differently interpreted. She begins the coinage in 196/5 and ends it in 88/7.1 propose to argue here for a beginning c. 164 and an end towards the end of the Roman Republic.

For the purposes of this article I shall assume that her sequence of issues is sound and shall only question her absolute dating. I have indicated doubts about her sequence elsewhere, but do not feel myself qualified to pursue them. The most important single point in her new sequence is the discovery that the coins of BAΣIΛE MIΘPAΔATHΣ–APIΣTIΩN do not belong somewhere in the late two–magistrate issues, but are akin in style to the latest of the three–magistrate issues. I accept this absolutely, but question her deductions from it.

It will be convenient first to argue that my alternative dating is sound and then to deal with the apparent objections. The arguments for the alternative dating fall into four categories: major historical difficulties, the hoard evidence, the Attic prosopography, minor historical difficulties. In order to avoid misunderstanding, I wish to say that, despite my known interests and the length of the present section on Attic prosopography, this topic has been subsidiary in my thinking and that it was not until the hoard evidence forced on me the belief in a later date that I investigated the prosopography at all closely.